Mission Statement:

In collaboration with Loudmouth Collective and with various visual and performance artists, Ugly Duckling Presse also supports and participates in the creation of works off paper: these may be performed, or they may exist on digital video, CD, or tree bark. On or off the page, UDP endeavors to create spaces in which people can have an experience of art free of expectation, coercion, and utility.

The Presse maintains a small workshop and letterpress studio on the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

---comment from Matvei Yankelevich: From its inception, the Ugly Duckling was an attempt to create a democratic art-object. In other words, creating cheap or free materials/events that were not commercial in their nature, and presented (unsuspecting) audiences with something physically touched by a human hand, containing the trace of its original gesture (whether off-handed or thoroughly conceived). The publishing act for UDP has always been thought of as a kind of performance, so how we do it (as a kind of amorphous collective, with changing modes of operation) was and is as important as what we do.